Beaneball

Oakland won again yesterday, their sixth straight victory, with Joe Blanton pitching yet another strong game (eight innings, two runs, one walk, five strikeouts, thirteen ground-ball outs). Blanton's five strikeouts are most impressive because earlier in the season, it would take him two or three games strung together to ring up five batters. Nobody's ever going to go nuts over his strikeout rate as it stands, but at least it's one that, when combined with a low walk rate and a great home-run rate, can mix together to make a successful pitcher. Nick Swisher also homered again, and the AP wrap-up mentioned that he's "quickly becoming a contender for AL rookie of the year honors." Well, maybe so, but not justifiably. Baseball Prospectus has a separate VORP list just for rookies which shows that Swisher is 19th among AL position-playing rookies in VORP. That doesn't even include the 17 AL rookie pitchers who have accumulated more VORP than Swisher thus far. Purely by VORP, the AL rookie of the year has been Chris Young, the tall righty for Texas. Swisher, in fact, trails two of his own teammates for the honor: the aformentioned Smokin' Joe Blanton and new first baseman Dan Johnson. Keiichi Yabu is not far behind. Stats pages have been updated. Keith Ginter just continues to suck.

Posted by jason in Baseball, Oakland A's at 15:26 | |

Courtesy of Chris Lehmann's blog, here's a really neat site that shows the current front page of newspapers all over the world. Awesome!

Posted by jason in Computer, Education, News, Reading at 14:37 | |

All of the stats listed in the sidebar have been updated through yesterday's game. I've also changed the Relievers page to only list those pitchers currently on the squad (and, hopefully, pitching out of the bullpen - hence the removal of Kirk Saarloos from the list). Notes from the stats, you ask? Sure. From the ARC reports: Rich Harden, despite missing about a month, is the A's most valuable pitcher so far, with phenom Huston Street not far behind. Street will probably actually lose value as he moves into the closer role because he won't be pitching in the high leverage "jam" situations he was in earlier in the year. Bobby Kielty holds on to the top hitter spot, with Mark Kotsay a fairly distant second. In an indictment of Oakland's offensive "prowess" so far, Jermaine Clark has been Oakland's third most valuable hitter in 2005.

Posted by jason in Baseball, Oakland A's, The Blog at 20:12 | |

Today was my final day at school. I feel ambivalent, as usual. I'm happy to be starting law school at Cardozo in the fall, but I'm sad to be leaving behind these people who I've gotten to know well over the past two years. I'm still in the city, of course, and I'll stay in contact, but it won't be the same as seeing them every day. There were a lot of good times, and my biggest sense of dread comes from the idea that this'll end up being the best work experience I ever have, and I've just voluntarily ended it to try to grab the brass ring.

Posted by jason in Personal at 22:52 | |

Sorry for the long outage. Those of you who visited via the web got the message: I managed to exceed my bandwidth limit for the month. I thought I had 25 gigs of bandwidth available to me, but it turned out that I only had 10. I've upgraded to give myself 25 a month now, though, so hopefully this shouldn't be a problem anymore.

Posted by jason in The Blog at 13:01 | |

All the various stats and reports are being updated as we speak. Yes, finally.

Posted by jason in Baseball, Oakland A's, The Blog at 23:19 | |

Dan Johnson hit his first big-league homer and the A's have a chance tonight, with Barry Zito going against Jamie Moyer, to get out of the basement! Oakland's finally winning the games they should be winning, and they're doing it with decent offense and good pitching, as they should be. They'd have to reel off a preposterous hot streak to get back into the actual race, but if they play like they're capable of for the rest of the season, they'll at least finish with a respectable record. Who needs Erubiel Durazo and Octavio Dotel anyway? Ideally, stats updates, plus some thoughts on law school, should be coming.

Posted by jason in Baseball, Oakland A's at 11:44 | |

Not that I think Matt Watson is a savior or anything (0-4 yesterday in the sweep-clinching loss to Washington), but at least the A's finally sent Charles Thomas away, banishing him to Sacramento until he re-learns how to hit. By the way, if Eric Chavez does something more than add yet another 0-4 to his resume yesterday, then maybe the A's win a one-run game, rather than lose another one.

Posted by jason in Baseball, Oakland A's at 10:54 | |

As if A's fans actually needed more proof to show their fellow fans that Oakland's drafting and development philosophy is far from dogmatic, today's draft resulted in five consecutive high school pitchers heading to Oakland.

Posted by jason in Baseball, Oakland A's at 23:48 | |

Tom G over at Balls, Sticks, and Stuff interviewed Dan Meyer via email recently and posts the transcript here. It's pretty good, and it's neat that Meyer cooperated so easily. Best segment:

How did your injury come about and what is your prognosis? Timetable for return? Rehab? I originally pulled a muscle in my shoulder during spring training but I didn’t say anything but I was supposed to be fighting for a job in the rotation. That was a big mistake because I changed mechanically to compensate for pain and it only got worse. The best thing for me is that I didn’t not severely hurt myself in my act of stupidity so hopefully things will back to normal at soon. Time table for my return is mid-June.

Posted by jason in Baseball, Oakland A's at 10:49 | |

A co-worker loaned me a DVD from Film Movement with six shorts on it, and I liked them so much, I thought I'd proselytize a little bit. Plus, it's a slow Sunday and it's hard to get excited about a last-place baseball team, so here it is. Listed first on the cover was Mt. Head (Atama-yama in Japanese), an animated Japanese movie about a "stingy man" who ends up having a cherry tree growing from the top of his head. It's as bizarre as it sounds, but the narration, by Takeharu Kunimoto, is fantastically weird. As the aforementioned co-worker pointed out, the nose of the "stingy man" bears too close a resemblance to a stereotypical Jewish nose for comfort, but if you can ignore that, it's a pretty trippy little film. Das Rad ("Rocks," in German) is also illustrated, though in a vastly different style. The idea is that rocks are watching us, having conversations, playing around and generally enjoying life, but on a vastly different time scale. The idea is fantastic, but nine minutes was a little too long for something that's essentially just a really neat idea. In the end, it ended up being cute, but not much more. Inja (which means "dog" in, I assume, Afrikaans) is about a black boy and a puppy in South Africa who are split up rather cruelly by a landowner. The landowner's methods come back to haunt him in the end, though. This was probably the best of the six films: it was quite beautiful and obviously poignant, but did not try to reach farther than a 17-minute film should. Also notable was Thandie Newton showing up in the "thanks" section of the credits. Sangam, the name of a spot of pilgrimage in India, is about a recent immigrant to New York who encounters a countryman on the subway. They reminisce, talk, sing, and then things get weird. Overall, I thought it was just okay, with two highlights: the editing and the performance of Sanjay Chandani as Vivek, the man the immigrant encounters on the subway. Chandani has had a minor TV and movie career, according to his IMDB credits, but I think he could be capable of more were he to be given the chance. I also caught Mira Nair's name in the "thanks" section of the credits. The First Three Lives of Stuart Hornsley is a time travel story starring Tunde Adebimpe, who is more famous as a member of the band TV on the Radio but who is also a graduate of NYU's film school. If this was a thesis film at NYU (it was produced under the auspices of Tisch, according to the credits), it appears to be one of those that benefits from a larger budget (and a longer runtime: at thirty minutes, it was easily the longest film in this collection) than its peers. That said, it's not a bad movie, but in the end, it was just sort of sweet. Adebimpe was pretty good as the title character, and I liked Isaac Bloch as his young protege Vitaliy, but if you've seen the Simpsons time travel episode, you've sort of seen this movie. Spike Lee earned a "thank you" in this film. Finally, the most superficially pleasing of the six was Deathdealer, a mockumentary starring Henry Rollins as a kind of door-to-door businessman dealing with a bit of a midlife crisis. I'm hesitant to say more about the story, though the title gives something away, but suffice it to say that I was greatly amused and thought the film quite clever. It wasn't trying for anything more than amusement, so we oughtn't fault it for not achieving more.

Posted by jason in Movies at 23:04 | |

The A's lost last night for the first time in five games, and there's no shame in dropping a 6-2 ballgame when the starting pitching matchup is Ryan Glynn for your team against Roy Halladay for theirs.

Glynn, who I didn't even know was on the A's (the game story says the he was acquired in a trade with these same Blue Jays about a month ago), pitched pretty well: three runs in seven innings will win you a lot of ballgames (unless you're playing for a team that can't hit). The final score was worse than 3-2, though, because of, as usual, Juan Cruz. Cruz got smacked for three runs despite not recording an out and has now allowed 24 runs in 20 innings on the year. The Tim Hudson trade now looks downright awful: Dan Meyer is hurt, Charles Thomas can't hit, and Juan Cruz can't pitch. Plus, Tim Hudson's ERA is hovering around three.

It's not like it was a bad deal, though, because you have to evaluate the trade on its merits at the time. Oakland was dumping salary and got two good players (Meyer and Cruz) and one potentially okay one in return. That nobody has turned out well has to be laid at someone's feet, but it can't be entirely Beane.

Dan Johnson, I'd like to note, while he's hitting just .185 with only one extra base hit, has walked about once a game, for a total of seven walks in 34 plate appearances. His OBP is a respectable .353. If he continues to walk like that while raising his batting average to something along the lines of .250 (which seems pessimistic), we'd have a pretty valuable player on our hands. On the other hand, if he doesn't hit for any more power, we're looking at Jeremy Giambi-style value, rather than Jason Giambi-style.

Ryan Glynn doesn't have a PECOTA projection, but glancing at his numbers, I wouldn't want A's fans to get too excited about him. Even adjusting for that pitchers' hell-hole in Texas he threw in for his first three seasons, his career ERA is 4.87. He walks too many guys (4 per nine) and doesn't strike out enough of them (4.2 per nine). On the other hand, he struck out six last night, and in his last couple of years in AAA (Syracuse and Richmond), has average over 7.5 K/9, despite having cracked seven just once in five prior stops in AAA (Oklahoma a few times, then Calgary and Indianapolis). Perhaps he learned something, perhaps he's peaking, or perhaps it's a fluke, but Glynn is a low-risk, medium-upside kind of player for this team, so why not? It's not like Britt Reames, who was DFA'd to make room for Glynn, was going to provide any better stuff.

Posted by jason in Baseball, Oakland A's at 13:24 | |